Vice President Al Gore, left, and President Bill Clinton attended the first Lake Tahoe Summit in 1997.
Former Vice President Al Gore, the driving force behind the original Lake Tahoe Summit, will return for this year’s summit in August.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., one of those who originally sought a presidential summit to spur recovery of the Sierra lake, said Gore took what he originally thought would be a relatively small event and, with support from then-President Bill Clinton, turned it into an event he said “put Tahoe on a path to recovery.”
The original event resulted in Clinton signing the executive order making Lake Tahoe a national priority.
Passage of the Lake Tahoe Restoration Act in 2000 spurred efforts to restore the lake’s clarity and brought those efforts $300 million over 10 years to fund it.
Several other major steps also have occurred during the past decade including the Lake Tahoe Restoration Act of 2010 which authorizes $415 million over eight years for forest fuels management, watershed restoration and other vital projects. That legislation was recently passed by the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.
“We’re not there yet but we’ve made a lot of progress,” said Reid in a Monday conference call.
This year’s summit will be held Aug. 19 at Sand Harbor State Park.